+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures. There's just nothing left to get the attention of corporate media. The fact is that no-one cares about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, except a small core constituency of idealists here on these forums. It HAD newsworthy spectacle value as prices skyrocketed and people "got rich quick," but those times are over. There is nothing left of newsworthy value.

+ The price run-up happened SOLELY on hype alone. There's not much analysis that needs to be done here. It was clearly a bubble that started with the Silk Road coverage, inflated with the mining craze, and ended with the Gox scandal. That's it folks. Bitcoin jumped the shark 3 weeks ago.

+ The current "stability" is no such thing. There is no stability when there's no backing economy. The only "stability" we're seeing is roughly the same sub 10-15,000 (could be exceedingly lower, and possibly a bit higher though doubtfully) "investors" propping up the price and using trading bots to maintain the appearance of a functioning market and "stability." The fact is that the market has been on a slow and steady DECLINE ever since Gox came back online. This is because there is no new blood entering the market, just the same old speculators throwing more of their paychecks into it; BUT, not enough to grow the market. That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures. There's just nothing left to get the attention of corporate media. The fact is that no-one cares about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, except a small core constituency of idealists here on these forums. It HAD newsworthy spectacle value as prices skyrocketed and people "got rich quick," but those times are over. There is nothing left of newsworthy value.

+ The price run-up happened SOLELY on hype alone. There's not much analysis that needs to be done here. It was clearly a bubble that started with the Silk Road coverage, inflated with the mining crazy, and ended with the Gox scandal. That's it folks. Bitcoin jumped the shark 3 weeks ago.

+ The current "stability" is no such thing. There is no stability when there's no backing economy. The only "stability" we're seeing is roughly the same sub 10-15,000 (could be exceedingly lower, and possibly a bit higher though doubtfully) "investors" propping up the price and using trading bots to maintain the appearance of a functioning market and "stability." The fact is that the market has been on a slow and steady DECLINE ever since Gox came back online. This is because there is no new blood entering the market, just the same old speculators throwing more of their paychecks into it; BUT, not enough to grow the market. That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures. There's just nothing left to get the attention of corporate media. The fact is that no-one cares about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, except a small core constituency of idealists here on these forums. It HAD newsworthy spectacle value as prices skyrocketed and people "got rich quick," but those times are over. There is nothing left of newsworthy value.

+ The price run-up happened SOLELY on hype alone. There's not much analysis that needs to be done here. It was clearly a bubble that started with the Silk Road coverage, inflated with the mining crazy, and ended with the Gox scandal. That's it folks. Bitcoin jumped the shark 3 weeks ago.

+ The current "stability" is no such thing. There is no stability when there's no backing economy. The only "stability" we're seeing is roughly the same sub 10-15,000 (could be exceedingly lower, and possibly a bit higher though doubtfully) "investors" propping up the price and using trading bots to maintain the appearance of a functioning market and "stability." The fact is that the market has been on a slow and steady DECLINE ever since Gox came back online. This is because there is no new blood entering the market, just the same old speculators throwing more of their paychecks into it; BUT, not enough to grow the market. That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures. There's just nothing left to get the attention of corporate media. The fact is that no-one cares about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, except a small core constituency of idealists here on these forums. It HAD newsworthy spectacle value as prices skyrocketed and people "got rich quick," but those times are over. There is nothing left of newsworthy value.

+ The price run-up happened SOLELY on hype alone. There's not much analysis that needs to be done here. It was clearly a bubble that started with the Silk Road coverage, inflated with the mining craze, and ended with the Gox scandal. That's it folks. Bitcoin jumped the shark 3 weeks ago.

+ The current "stability" is no such thing. There is no stability when there's no backing economy. The only "stability" we're seeing is roughly the same sub 10-15,000 (could be exceedingly lower, and possibly a bit higher though doubtfully) "investors" propping up the price and using trading bots to maintain the appearance of a functioning market and "stability." The fact is that the market has been on a slow and steady DECLINE ever since Gox came back online. This is because there is no new blood entering the market, just the same old speculators throwing more of their paychecks into it; BUT, not enough to grow the market. That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures. There's just nothing left to get the attention of corporate media. The fact is that no-one cares about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, except a small core constituency of idealists here on these forums. It HAD newsworthy spectacle value as prices skyrocketed and people "got rich quick," but those times are over. There is nothing left of newsworthy value.

+ The price run-up happened SOLELY on hype alone. There's not much analysis that needs to be done here. It was clearly a bubble that started with the Silk Road coverage, inflated with the mining crazy, and ended with the Gox scandal. That's it folks. Bitcoin jumped the shark 3 weeks ago.

+ The current "stability" is no such thing. There is no stability when there's no backing economy. The only "stability" we're seeing is roughly the same sub 10-15,000 (could be exceedingly lower, and possibly a bit higher though doubtfully) "investors" propping up the price and using trading bots to maintain the appearance of a functioning market and "stability." The fact is that the market has been on a slow and steady DECLINE ever since Gox came back online. This is because there is no new blood entering the market, just the same old speculators throwing more of their paychecks into it; BUT, not enough to grow the market. That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

All of which begs the question: what are you still doing here, then?

Educating you.

In the first paragraph, you use the word newsworthy three times... that's bad English.

In the second paragraph, you use the words SOLELY and alone within the same sentence, a redundancy... also bad English.

In the third paragraph, you use doubtfully when it should've been "doubtful"

In the fourth paragraph, the words reasonable foreseeable future make very little sense.

Your last sentence is flat-out wrong, as you are clearly speculating on the future of bitcoin... whether the paragraphs above contain facts is entirely beside the point.

If you don't mind, I will take my education from someone whose language skills are slightly more polished.

The price has stabilized at roughly 50% of the spike high. It is now backing and filling and distributing from weak hands to strong hands. All of this is perfectly normal in a healthy market. There are so many amazing things about Bitcoin, even one of them is enough to make it a success. For example, in my video "Bitcoins and Borders" I outline how the Bitcoin has single-handedly destroyed the power of capital controls, currency controls, and exchange controls. Just that function ALONE is enough to give Bitcoin a value of 1000. But there are so many others. You are too close now, as you are not seeing the forest for the trees. Take a step back and you'll see a forest that will grow for the next 100 years.

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures. There's just nothing left to get the attention of corporate media. The fact is that no-one cares about bitcoin as a medium of exchange, except a small core constituency of idealists here on these forums. It HAD newsworthy spectacle value as prices skyrocketed and people "got rich quick," but those times are over. There is nothing left of newsworthy value.

+ The price run-up happened SOLELY on hype alone. There's not much analysis that needs to be done here. It was clearly a bubble that started with the Silk Road coverage, inflated with the mining craze, and ended with the Gox scandal. That's it folks. Bitcoin jumped the shark 3 weeks ago.

+ The current "stability" is no such thing. There is no stability when there's no backing economy. The only "stability" we're seeing is roughly the same sub 10-15,000 (could be exceedingly lower, and possibly a bit higher though doubtfully) "investors" propping up the price and using trading bots to maintain the appearance of a functioning market and "stability." The fact is that the market has been on a slow and steady DECLINE ever since Gox came back online. This is because there is no new blood entering the market, just the same old speculators throwing more of their paychecks into it; BUT, not enough to grow the market. That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

+ Echoing the same dilemma of 3 months ago when bitcoin began catching on with speculators, "Where is the bitcoin economy." Well folks, this is it. The list of bitcoin merchants hasn't grown at all, and in fact if you browse the Trade section of bitcoin.org itself, and explore some of the merchants there you'll find that some of them have removed their bitcoin advertisements and no longer APPEAR to accept it. I encourage you to peruse them and see for yourself, because during that excercise you'll also see that basically all businesses listed are extremely small time, mom and pop shop operations, and most of them quite amateur at that. That is your bitcoin economy. That is what you have to work with now, and for any reasonable foreseeable future.

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

This forum total members is still growing 18% monthly.

You're going to gauge the financial viability of bitcoin based upon...forum members?

Quick everyone, create new gmail addresses and register new forum accounts, I think we've found a solution to the declining bitcoin market!

For any 'bubble' comparison, we have until the end of August to be proven wrong or not. Again, you claim some kind of future knowledge, which I doubt you have.

Quote

The current "stability" is no such thing. (snip) That's why were seeing a steady loss of a few cents of USD value everyday. And this will continue for the long haul.

Again, you claim to know future value. I find this interesting, as no-one has clear knowledge of the future. My post about future potential growth wasn't about dates and times, only a general guide as to how I think things will work out. I didn't claim to know for sure. Why are you so sure, then?

Quote

This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts.

I find most facts have citations - all I can see in your post is some unconfirmed knowledge of future events. So which are you, an oracle, or someone talking out of their ass?

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures.

Thread fail right away, not a fact at all, can't take the rest of your post seriously now.

The price has stabilized at roughly 50% of the spike high. It is now backing and filling and distributing from weak hands to strong hands. All of this is perfectly normal in a healthy market. There are so many amazing things about Bitcoin, even one of them is enough to make it a success. For example, in my video "Bitcoins and Borders" I outline how the Bitcoin has single-handedly destroyed the power of capital controls, currency controls, and exchange controls. Just that function ALONE is enough to give Bitcoin a value of 1000. But there are so many others. You are too close now, as you are not seeing the forest for the trees. Take a step back and you'll see a forest that will grow for the next 100 years.

+ Bitcoin just enjoyed more media exposure over the past 3 months than can reasonably be expected to occur anywhere in the near future. There's just nothing newsworthy forthcoming unless there is something scandalous that happens again, and we're just about out of interesting scandals. We've made the rounds from illegal purchasing to hacking to market failures.

Thread fail right away, not a fact at all, can't take the rest of your post seriously now.

Use your imagination. What is all of God's Hell's can you imagine anyone in the corporate media writing about bitcoin?

Bitcoin was in some of the largest financial publications in the world. You think there's anyone left out there that gives a damn to write about it again? Why would that be, pray tell?

Please, maybe you could emulate a possible headline?

There is nothing left that's worth saying to the public about bitcoin, from the mouths of the corporate media. Period.

Overall, I agree with the OP's sentiment. I've been quite frustrated with how slowly things have been progressing. In the last 6 weeks, I have worked with two separate sites to begin accepting Bitcoin as an alternative payment method. These aren't little mom and pop operations either. One of the sites is hard coding the exchange rate at $20. The other is using market price + 0.5, so there is already a huge discount being factor in. Yet sadly, fewer Bitcoin orders have come in over the last 6 weeks combined than either of these sites typically receives by credit card over the course of a single hour. The vendors I've talked to absolutely love the idea of getting out from under Visa/MCs thumb, but there's just not enough incentive to accept this form of payment if no one's using it.

However, I also think there are a few relatively minor developments that could turn the trend very rapidly upward. There is still presently no effective way to introduce the average consumer to Bitcoins. We're facing a major chicken and egg problem, and this side of it is just as important as getting the merchants to accept it (if not more so). The only solution I see for this is for someone to build a very professional online wallet service that also sells at least small units of bitcoin (even at 2x market price).

One of the sites I've referred to above is an online game that sells monthly subscriptions. They have expressed an interest in selling the service on a per game basis (for something like $0.05), using Bitcoin for micro-payments. They won't move on this until they can also link to a wallet service where their customers can sign up for a Bitcoin account and immediately fund it, even with just $5-10 worth of coin. Once these initial road blocks to growth are overcome, things could expand very quickly.